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Morbidelli Motorcycles

A Brief History of the Marque

Morbidelli, which is a woodworking machinery outfit, built a trio of
50cc GP bikes in 1969 for the Italian championship. In 1971 they built
their first (and unique) 125cc GP machine, a twin patterned after the 1966
Suzuki GP. In 1972 and 1973, that machine won a few GPs but the death of
driver Parlotti put the brakes on this. In 1974, Dutchman Joerg Moller
was hired to design and build real winners, and he did. In the hands of
Paolo Pileri and Pier-Paolo Bianchi, these 125cc twins won 3 world championship
in succession, while a larger 250cc won the 1977 title in the hands of
Mario Lega. In 1977, Jorg Moller was fired and joined MBA-Benelli Armi,
now at political war with Morbidelli.

Morbidelli then built a 4-cylinder 500cc that raced until 1982, when
Morbidelli quit racing due to economic pressure.

In the late 1990's, a V8 was conceived and built by an outside company
with the blessing of Giancarlo Morbidelli, bearing his name. This was not
followed by production and now resides in the Morbidelli museum in Pesaro
along with hundreds of other italian racing machines.

An unrelated division of Benelli called Benelli
Armi built Morbidelli 125cc Replicas under license for private racers to
purchase. They were not called Morbidelli but "MBA".

Giancarlo Morbidelli is now retired while his son Gianni, who raced
in 4 Formula One seasons with Ferrari, Arrows and other makes, now races
sedans in Italian and other nations championships.

Thanks to tsrf24 at tsrfcars dot com
of Los Angeles, CA for the history above.

The writer, PdL,
is the engineer who devised the 1978 Morbidelli 250cc GP bike that finished
in third place in the world championship in 1979 driven by Graziano Rossi,
the father of the current world champion in MotoGP, Valentino Rossi. You
may see a bit of this here
and here.

Len Carr from Earl Shilton in Leicestershire was the first rider in
the U.K to ride Morbidelli. He was 1977 British champion A C U East midland
champion B M C R C Champion british formula champion and rode in the 1977
and 1978 Silverstone G.P.s, Len now has a hotel in the Isle of man,
Sat Oct 13 2007
carrlen at hotmail.com